


A Natural Enough Way

by fresne



Category: Slavic Mythology & Folklore
Genre: Also killing some gods who get over it, Gen, Some offscreen references to eating people, Yuletide 2020, Yuletide Treat
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-22
Updated: 2020-12-22
Packaged: 2021-03-11 01:41:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,901
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28247088
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fresne/pseuds/fresne
Summary: In the summer, the lands of the tsar buzzed under infinitely long days. In the winter, the lands of the tsar slumbered under the infinitely long nights.  In the summer, the good people sent offerings to Lada, the goddess of beauty and prosperity. In the winter, the good people ritually drowned images of Marzanna, the goddess of death and winter.Baba Yaga had never been drowned and ground up anyone who tried to do it between her iron teeth. She did not always have iron teeth. She had not always kept Morning, Day, and Night as her servants. For that matter, Koschei did not always have a seven legged horse, a magic cloak of night, some dozen rings, and a habit of kidnapping warrior queens.These things happened in a natural enough way.
Comments: 17
Kudos: 20
Collections: Yuletide 2020





	A Natural Enough Way

**Author's Note:**

  * For [ozsaur](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ozsaur/gifts).



In the summer, the lands of the tsar buzzed under infinitely long days. Deliriously sleepless, Belobog, god of light, shone down on the fields and the forests. He didn't rest all through the high days of summer. The Day was without rest too, riding on his horse all the hours. Night hid from the sun like a grumpy owl, and Morning was forgotten. On the tent pole of all that light, the good men and women braided flowers into wreaths and, setting a candle in the middle, set them to float on wide lakes to pray for the blessings of Lada, beautiful goddess of love and prosperity. All the long days, Lada made love to Yarilo, god of growth and vegetation, in the fields and meadows.

Baba Yaga was never beautiful. She never made love. Many called her heartless. Koshchei was not yet heartless. Not yet deathless. Although contrary to some stories it wasn't his heart he hid inside a dove, inside an eagle, inside a wolf, inside a horse, inside a dragon.

One does not have much to do with the other.

In the winter, the lands of the tsar slumbered under the infinitely long nights. Czernobog, god of darkness, opened the door for storms to lay layers of snow down on the fields and the forests. Night rode his horse every hour, while Morning and Day slept like dogs by the fire. Sometimes when the storms pulled back, the stars twinkled like so many candles from the hearth of Marzanna, hideous goddess of death and loss. Though in those hours, Zmaj, dragons living in the mountains, whistled and cast lights into the sky as they made their way to the homes of men and women to make love. At the end of winter, when Morning was at last cantering on a ride, the good men and women would make dolls of Marzanna and ritually drown her so she could die and return as Lada once again. 

Baba Yaga had never been drowned and ground up anyone who tried to do it between her iron teeth. She did not always have iron teeth. She had not always kept Morning, Day, and Night as her servants. For that matter, Koschei did not always have a seven legged horse, a magic cloak of night, some dozen rings, and a habit of kidnapping warrior queens.

These things happened in a natural enough way. 

Czernobog stole a pickling cabbage that Marzanna had been keeping as a special treat for herself, and since it wasn't yet done pickling, he vomited it back out as an Ogress. 

Now that Ogress was hungry from the moment she stumbled onto the snowy earth. But it was winter with storms shoving each other to make their way through the door of storms. There was little to eat.

After much wandering, and some small devouring of fools in the forest, she came upon two small storehouses up off on the ground on log legs. Each with a trap door in their belly. The ogress was far too large to fit through the door of either, but she reached up inside one with a long frosty arm until she grabbed a hold of something. A little doll with a long nose wrapped in rags and w as bony as a set of juniper twigs stuffed in cloth might be. This was Baba Yaga to be. Not finding anything to eat, the Ogress reached into the second hut and pulled out a little doll wrapped in rags and stuffed with grass. This was Koschei to be. 

Now that Ogress, who had lived a fairly solitary life up until that point, what with eating anyone who came near her, loved those dolls. She talked to them when the sky whistled with the love songs of the Zmaj and lit up with ribbons of light. She cradled them in her arms when Morning stumbled out of whatever hole in the ground he'd been hiding in. As Czernobog shoved at the sticky storm door, and as it closed, as the days grew brighter, found himself to be Belobog once more. 

The Ogress loved those hideous and malformed dolls so much that she made them new clothing out of the clothes of her meals. She gave them little metal teeth out of the tips of her meal's knives. She bathed them in the deep pools in the heart of the forest when they got dirty - or in some cases bloody - and sang songs to them as she dressed them again. 

One of those pools was sacred to Mokosh, the moist mother goddess. The second pool was sacred to Marzanna, and so was quite deadly. 

Mokosh saw the love in the Ogress' heart and as was her nature to do, she brought the dolls to life as children.

This was a mixed blessing. The Ogress loved the children so much that she didn't eat them as soon as that happened. But fearing that she might forget herself, she put them back in the storehouses where she'd found them, and piled up the skeletons of the fools in the forest to serve as their guardians. 

There the children were, dropping out of the belly of the storehouses. Alone. Shivering in the wake of morning, when Lada came on them. She decided that she was a sort of grandmother to them, and slapped Belobog for being such an absent father that his daughter, the Ogress, had to abandon her children like that. 

Belobog gave each of them a magic fire to keep them warm. Lada gave each of the children an egg, but what they did with it was entirely different.

Baba Yaga put the egg into the front of the dress made by the Ogress, and whispered to it as the Ogress had once whispered to her. Koshchei put his soul into his egg, and was from that time forward deathless. Although, to be certain, he had to be very careful about what happened to his egg.

While what happened to Baba Yaga's egg was that it hatched into a little house on little chicken legs with little window eyes and a tiny mouth of sharp teeth where a key might go. How that hungry little house cheeped and scratched at the earth. Baba Yaga made a little fence out of the guardian bones to keep her little chicken house safe. She topped each leg bone with a skull that she filled with some part of the fire that Belobog had given her. No matter how much of that fire she pinched off, there was always plenty to go around. 

After that, she set off to visit her grandmother Lada for some food for the chicken-house.

Lada was by now getting a little blousy and short tempered with Yarilo, who was himself a little brittle as the sap dried and the trees filtered of leaves. As the sun dipped more and more over the horizon. Still she gave Baba Yaga some seeds for her chicken-house. She gave her a mortar and pestle that would grind the seeds without a hand to move them, and would even clean itself in Mokosh's pool. She also warned Baba Yaga that come the winter, she wouldn't find her grandmother so friendly. 

Baba Yaga took the seeds, which were good. But she wanted to make her chicken-house grow faster so it would be large enough to live in by the time winter came. She fed it beetles and wasps, and that seemed to work very well, but she wanted something bigger to feed it.

She wanted to feed her chicken-house some mice, and for that she'd need a cat. 

She set her long nose to sniff, sniff, sniffing, but what she found was a sack of kittens thrown in the river. Inside were eight dead kittens and one still living one. That very lucky kitten, black as Czernobog's night, had survived because the sack had floated on the very buoyant bodies of eight Marzanna dolls that had been drowned in the river that spring. Even more so, the souls of the other eight kittens were still lingering, tangled up in the ribbons of the dolls. Baba Yaga plucked out each of those souls and shoved them into the body of the cinder black kitten until it became the most cat like cat that was ever a cat. Nine times nine a cat this cat was and very clever.

Although, to be sure at this point it was still a kitten and not up to hunting mice. 

The kitten said, "Why are you willing to feed the house and not me?" 

"Because the house will be my home, and you are a lazy kitten who just wants to sleep and won't catch mice," snapped Baba Yaga, who didn't want to live in the storehouse all winter.

Seeing that he wasn't going to get any milk where he was, the kitten suggested they should go to the mountains where the Zmaj lived, and see what they could find there. 

Now in the winter, Zmaj think of nothing but transforming from their dragon forms into human shapes to make love to human men and women. A love to be sure that turns their lovers pale and listless, longing for nothing but their fire. While in the spring and summer days, the Zmaj spend their time shepherding clouds to bring the rains to water the fields. Also so they can steal away to be with their lovers. By the time autumn came around, the Zmaj were weary of love, but found there were ever more clouds.

This was the mood of the Zmaj, who it might be mentioned weren't merely dragons, but had three heads besides, when Baba Yaga arrived. The Zmaj took one look at Baba Yaga, wiry and bony with a long nose good for sniffing out things, and did not to want turn into a human and make love.

The Zmaj's first head said, "I'm hungry, let's eat her."

The Zmaj's second head said, "She looks skin and bones, let's not eat her. I'd catch her in my throat and choke."

The Zmaj's third head asked, "What is she doing?"

"I'm cleaning your home. It's filthy," said Baba Yaga, who had picked up a broom and was whisking dirt around in great clouds. She was very industrious and poked her long nose into everything getting it spick and span. Let's not forget her mortar, which ground up grain for flour, and with the skull fire from Belobog, soon there was bread to eat. Also, let's not forget the kitten, which was sneezing at the dust, rolling on its back, and jumping cutely at things.

Now whether it was the kitten being as adorable as nine kittens put together in one kitten shape, or the work of Baba Yaga, but the Zmaj decided not to eat Baba Yaga. In fact, she moved in. She brought her little chicken-house with its leg bone and skull fence up into the mountains as the days grew shorter and shorter. As Belobog got more and short tempered. Until with a growl, Czernobog flung open the door of storms and cast darkness everywhere. As Lada grew more and more wan and weary, her teeth sharper, her fingers more pointed. Until with a hiss, Marzanna harvested her lover Yarilo, and made a house out of his bones. 

Baba Yaga learned a great deal in the home of the Zmaj, who admittedly threatened to eat her every day, but also showed her how to ride her mortar in the air creating tempests. The trick of splitting one into three, mostly useful for the Zmaj with their three heads, but there it was. The trick of changing shapes. She took the shape of an eagle, a falcon, a raven. She ate as many mice that winter as did her chicken-house and growing kitten. This was also when she acquired a taste for eating children, as the Zmaj were often bringing them home when they found them wandering abandoned in the woods. Although, some were clever enough to pet the kitten and thus got away. Although, Baba Yaga would have had a taste for it from her Ogress mother. 

She thought often about the Ogress. How she had talked and loved and cared for Baba Yaga. That her last act of compassion had been to put aside the reaching Baba Yaga and not eat her.

But as much as she sniffed, she could not catch the Ogresses' scent.

Now you might wonder, what was Koshchei doing during all of this. He was deathless. This was very useful in a life as a thief of useful things. Magic things. Things that made him a powerful sorcerer, if one entirely self trained and therefore given to grave mistakes.

This was the difference between the two of them. Baba Yaga earned her keep and was taught. Koshchei took what he gained. Oh, Koshchei would have said that Baba Yaga got a dowry of a mortar and pestle. Baba Yaga would have said that Koshchei was an idiot and that eventually someone was going to find where he'd hidden his egg. But they were never on great speaking terms. After all, Baba Yaga could not lie and Koshchei played dice with truth.

The spring came again, the good folks drowned Marzanne in effigy, and her lover grew back up out of the ground around his own bones, and Yarilo loved beauty back into Marzanne. 

The Zmaj closed their home as they wandered far as they herded the clouds in the sky. Which was fine. By now, Baba Yaga's chicken-house was big enough to live in. She and the young cat, and their skull fence set off. They went back to where they'd started. Baba Yaga liked it there well enough. She boiled rich broths with the water sacred to Mokosh. She flew in the air in her mortar when she had business. 

Her business was trying to find the Ogress, but despite her long nose, Baba Yaga could not find her.

She was out flying, when wandering Day rode wearily up below her. He complained, as he often did at that time of year, "I have to spend every hour riding around because there's light all the time. While Morning disappears and Night hides."

Baba Yaga clucked her tongue and said, "You are an idiot. The answer is obvious."

Day said, "It's not obvious."

"It is," said Baba Yaga with a sniff of her long nose. She went back to her chicken-house. 

Night crept over when the shadow of her chicken-house passed over the hole in the ground where he was hiding. He said, "My brother says you know how to balance work between myself and my brothers."

"I do," said Baba Yaga. She swept the floor of her house to keep it tidy.

Night turned to the cat curled up by the stove. "Do you know what we need to do?"

But the cat, in a catlike way, and how could it not, simply yawned at Night. 

Morning came skulking around later, dragged in by Night and Day. "Tell us what we need to do," said Morning, "and we'll be your servants."

"Some servants," muttered Baba Yaga, "always about some other master's business." But they wouldn't stop pestering her, and it wasn't as if she could eat them. "Trade horses and cloaks. The gods trade jobs all the time." 

This had never occurred to Morning, Day, and Night, who were very much settled in their ways. But after that, they did trade enough to give the others a chance to get out of the ground or rest for a bit, and that was a good deal better.

Now some time after this happened, there was a plague of swan-geese on the land. Honking vicious creatures. The result of Belobog getting a summer cold and sneezing them into the world, and the nasty creatures breeding. 

The good men and women were trapped in their homes. The tsar and his knights couldn't go to war. This meant that they were home all the time, and when the Zmaj stole away from their cloud flocks, no one was in the mood for love. 

So the Zmaj came to Baba Yaga and said, "You owe us for the long winter we spent not eating you." Then at Baba Yaga's iron toothed grimace, the Zmaj added, "We taught you many things, and there's still more to teach."

"You're lazy," said Baba Yaga, because it was true. She asked, "What do you have left to teach?" 

The Zmaj offered up birch magic. They offered up rain. They offered up pebbles that could grow mountains. They offered up cups of water that could create lakes. They offered up seeds that could grow thickets. They offered everything because they were desperate with desire.

Baba Yaga noticed that they didn't ask the cat for help. She decided it was because the cat was as lazy as they were. 

Actually, as far as the Zmaj were concerned, the cat was a cute purring kitten with tiny claws. 

Baba Yaga took everything, and a new brick oven to place Belobog's fire. That would keep her chicken-house cozy and warm on the inside. She set off in her mortar to where Lada was making love with Yarilo. She coughed three times and threw water from Marzanna's pool on them. Yarilo went to ashes and Lada sat straight up with Marzanna's rage in her heart. She gusted a furious wind at Baba Yaga, who crouched down inside her mortar. Winter on a summer's day. A winter that set the swan-geese to flying helter skelter and gone. 

That didn't save her from dying. It just meant she was dead in the mortar. The mortar toddled back to the pool of Mokosh. She might have expected the mortar and pestle to wash themselves in the pool. They might have eventually, but before that happened, Koshchei showed up.

Forgotten after so long, but not gone. After the chicken house wouldn't let him in, he dumped Baba Yaga in Mokosh's pool. She glared at him and asked, "What do you want?"

He said, "I came out of brotherly feeling. I came because it's been too long. I came because," he tugged at his hat trying to escape in Marzanna's wind. "Perhaps we could continue this conversation inside."

Baba Yaga grumbled, but she had her chicken-house crouch down while Marzanna was raging. For seven days, Marzanna was in a deadly mood, until Belobog came down to find out just what was going on. 

He wasn't an idiot. He didn't interfere with her. He got Mokosh, who wrapped Marzanna in a soft mist and then a cool fog, and then comforted her into a better mood. The harvest was bad that year. The crops didn't grow, but everyone wasn't trapped inside.

While Marzanne was still raging, Baba Yaga let a few of the swan-geese into her chicken-house, but only if they promised to be her faithful servants ever after.

During that time, Koshchei and Baba Yaga snipped at each other. Koshchei incapable of telling the truth and Baba Yaga loathing lies. Also, swan-geese. Also the cat. It was a bit too cosy in the house.

Koshchei left when the wind died down, and Baba Yaga was left in peace. 

For a short while.

The Zmaj told their lovers, who were many, how helpful Baba Yaga had been. 

Soon every fool with a problem was wandering into her woods to ask for her help. Heroes too idiotic to find their own privates if they were asked to do so. She showed them the fence post missing a skull. She showed them the oven. She told them the price. She even turned herself into three sisters, and the idiots kept coming to pay it. 

She fed the idiots to the house. She had no taste for idiots.

Eventually, the cat yawned and helped one escape. He said, "You're the idiot. If you never let one leave to explain the price, they'll just keep coming." The cat licked his paws and said, "I even told that one that I'm a traitor for milk thick with cream."

Baba Yaga snorted down her long nose at him, but had to admit the idiot heroes thinned out after that. 

That was when she finally found time to look through her belongings. Only to find that Koshchei had stolen a pebble to make a mountain. A cup to make a lake. A seed to make a bramble. He'd stolen all sorts of things. It was what he did.

This was why Baba Yaga made the chains that could bind Koshchei with all his magic and gave them to the most powerful warrior queen in the land. A woman who was, incidentally, quite beautiful. Baba Yaga rested secure that at last her brother was getting what he deserved for theft when the warrior queen caught him and threw him in her dungeon. 

Of course, he got free and kidnapped the warrior queen. Of course, Baba Yaga practically gave a magic horse to the queen's sister in exchange for some niggling tasks sorting beans and such. Of course, once she did that the idiots came back.

Some idiots. Some clever. Blessed with dolls and bones and a few wits. She glared at them, she gave them tasks. She gave fair warning and she gave fair trade. That was how she heard about the Ogress. A young man with the soul of his mother in a fish mentioned that she was guarding a cursed castle.

Baba Yaga flew from her chicken-house. She went in her mortar to the mountain castle where the Ogress was. Where she was being pierced to the heart by a sword that had once been a needle. Baba Yaga threw down a seed for a thicket. She cast a wind that would fly her mother up into the air. She spun them both to her chicken-house. Where with a whisper and a sharp snatch of her fingers, she transformed Ogress into something new. Gave her hands and a voice, but hid her body, which wouldn't have fit into the house anyway.

They chatted together all the long days of Marzanna's night.

It did mean come the spring, and word came that Koshchei's egg had been found and he'd become no longer so deathless, the Ogress nagged Baba Yaga into bringing Koshchei back to life. Of course, he promptly put his soul back in the egg, stole a comb that could turn into a stand of birch trees, and left. 

Baba Yaga sent the swan-geese to make his life miserable for a year and a day, while the Ogreess reminded her that she had more than one comb. 

But this is why when Koshchei dies, he always comes back. So he really is deathless. 

This is also why when Baba Yaga is killed by one of the heroes, she also returns. Since Koshchei knows he can't come back unless Baba Yaga is there to do it.

But most importantly, it's why Baba Yaga is more than happy to explain the chicken-house, the cat, the servants of Morning, Day, and Night, but will never say anything about the disembodied hands helping her at her daily tasks. Baba Yaga spent a long time looking for the Ogress and she knows what idiots heroes can be. 


End file.
